The9

We weren't paying an inflated price because of tv money, that stuff hasn't even started yet. We were playing an inflated price because he was still in the first year of his deal with Hull.

There are, but none of them are going to pay for Wembley.

All terrible ideas, it's bad enough now that you can't still have 5 replays and pitches are made of grass. Midweek makes it completely irrelevant. Seeding removes the thing that makes it interesting, the completely random draw. Not to mention that it's been that random draw format since about 1872. No replays will stitch up lower league clubs who get drawn at home to a big club. Extra time gives tied matches an extra period to resolve themselves on the field before going to penalties. CL spot for winning an essentially about to be made irrelevant competition is ridiculous.

Not now you wouldn't.

I'd have gone for his handball at Newcastle personally to make the point over the whole season, but well done thinking of one in the same match. The point still remains that refereeing decisions over the course of one match can have a disproportionate impact on the league table, which supports what david in sweden said about "a few crazy Clattenburg decisions might decide the title places, regardless of what the teams may achieve on the pitch". The popularly-held stuff about it "evening out over the season" is nonsense. Your "offsetting" argument depends on equal forces of crapness/goodness in refereeing for both decisions, which isn't a given, or even that likely with inconsistencies. Specific incidents can have significant consequences without other incidents in that team's favour having anything like the same impact in the opposite direction. Which is not to say these are the only factors in play. But they can be measured in isolation.

For Turkish's benefit, it was all the rage two seasons before, when people still thought we might get relegated whilst 13th for some reason. That site is decent for statistical spread based on points total and matches remaining alone, but doesn't seem to take previous opponents or difficulty of schedule into consideration. Apparently Saints have a 23% chance of coming 5th and the same of coming 6th, with an 18% chance of coming 7th, as we're 5 points clear of 8th. Chances of coming 3rd and 12th are about 1% each. Leicester's chances of winning the title dropped from 55% to 41% by virtue of losing to Arsenal last weekend.

We only needed a draw to have finished above them. The first one should have been given though Djurucic did himself no favours by going over so easily when he could have scored anyway.

He should know.

We can't recall him. He's on a season-long loan and there are no transfer windows left which is the only time you can recall players on season-long loans.

In terms of your comparison, the problem is transfer fee and wages in the examples given. I think both of them could end up having a similar impact for Saints in the Prem, would having Gaston's Saints career be regarded as a success for an academy product?

I think you're probably right on all of that, though Moss had already let the foul on Fonte go.

Bielsa-disciples' teams always lose form in the last few months of the season, cumulative fatigue is going to get them.

He's gone from a guaranteed backup to a useful option, depending on the formation.

The over-analysis doesn't help, but there is nothing you can do to help a completely hapless decision like Clattenburg's on the weekend. All season we've had stuff about "unnatural positions" and yet Sterling gets penalised for jumping to block in a completely natural position having turned his back, with his arm all but hidden, and the ball deflecting off his back basically onto his armpit. Not to mention that it was right on the corner of the area which whilst correctly given as in the box and absolutely accurate, still seems wildly disproportionate compared to the likely outcome of the cross. FWIW Jon Moss's lack of penalty against Yoshida for yet another clumsy collision with a striker in the box was easily explained away by the camera behind him, which showed that from his angle it looked like the striker fell into Yoshida, even though it was Yoshida clipping the striker which caused them both to fall over, which was clear from the camera on the sidelines. His disallowing of the Pelle goal for foul on the keeper can be explained by the enduring phenomenon of refs being desperate to protect goalkeepers, for some reason.

All reflected in the table, but one of those bolted-on penalties from Friend would have changed those finishing positions nevertheless.

Leicester were 5000/1 to win the league at the start of the season, I think the past 20 years have shown the chances of anyone other than the biggest clubs with the most money winning the league is that much of an outside bet. We've already seen the impact of having Wasilewski on the pitch instead of Simpson for them, and that lack of squad depth compared to their rivals NOT being a factor has been essential. Frankly this season is the perfect storm of tactical sea-change, Ranieri's ability, other top players being unmotivated and injured at key times, Vardy and Mahrez being on fire at levels they've never reached before, some luck (a point at St Mary's with Kelvin in goal for a start) and Leicester not having to use much of their squad and therefore having something resembling their best eleven on the pitch more often than is usual (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3349675/Leicester-City-boss-Claudio-Ranieri-used-just-20-players-Premier-League-far-second-fewest-team.html). This will not happen again any time soon unless the top players continue to steal a living without putting any effort in, which opens the door for others to succeed based on something other than wages paid.

Just like Kevin Friend basically kept us from finishing 6th last season with 2 penalty decisions at home to Liverpool and put us into the Europa League qualifiers instead of the group stages. 6 Liverpool 38 18 8 12 52 48 +4 62 7 Southampton 38 18 6 14 54 33 +21 60

It didn't have any impact on me at all, I already expected it. Plenty of people thought holding the silence then was a really bad idea.

I'm not sure we do. The rest of our support wouldn't stand for it.

I'd love to know how you expect to jump high and sideways without raising your arms. It hit him on the back, then the arm, which wasn't even extended. Compare that to the Newcastle one just after Xmas when the guy saw the ball going over his head and jumped waving his leading arm (which was behind him) in the general area of where a header on target from behind him would have gone, and you can see the difference. Clattenburg's decision was absolutely appalling judgement.

There are a lot of players who aren't good enough for the Premier League, never mind the top half of the Premier League, who look good in the Championship.

Pavel Srnicek absolutely comical at 29 minutes, Kamara (Skate) banging on about how awful it was until the replay when he shut up. 39:30 for anyone doubting Brett Ormerod's value... 1:13:30 would be a red card for Smertin nowadays. Kamara talking crap then too. 1:47:00 for the second goal, and Kamara talking even more crap, "not a red card"...

Best time to have them. Though of course you have missed Leicester away from that list for some reason.

Koeman was my favourite defender of the late 80s/early 90s by some distance, mainly because he scored such incredible goals. Nice to see his two highest profile goals on there, the 1992 European Cup Final free-kick and the free-kick against England. My favourite is the dink over the top and lob past the keeper, absolutely superb.

To my recall, we scored one goal directly from a Delap throw - to Crouch at home in the relegation season, with Jamie Redknapp stood on the edge of the box - which made it all the more amusing when he subsequently said on tv that Saints "didn't know he had a long throw" and that "we never used it". I'm happy to accept there may have been others I've forgotten about, but the main difference was that there was no conscious "hoof-throw" set up or any specific tactic to exploit it endlessly like Pulis created at Stoke. As for your randomness about his shirt numbers, I dunno where that came from or who you were actually thinking of, as Delap signed for Saints in 2001, and squad numbers had been in use since 1993/4. Delap only ever wore number 18 for Saints.